January. Goal Smashing and Galloping in to 2020!

Hello and welcome to February already! Didn’t January just fly by?! I don’t know about you but I usually feel a little low in January. But not this year! I had set some goals for the year for Mya and me at the end of December and I have actually achieved some of them already! Hence why I am feeling rather positive!

I said that I wanted to find an instructor in Toulouse that I liked, and this was a goal that I set myself for 2019 and managed to go for one riding lesson. That was it. I made it into kind of a big deal as I was worried about my level of French and that it may be a complete waste of time if I could not understand the instructor or she not understand me. However the one lesson did go well and it gave me more confidence with Mya but I never really got back around to going again. But I have now found the one!!

My new instructor Noelie teaches Mya’s owner’s daughter Sasha to ride, so came recommended. It was so nice having her come to our yard and having a lesson on Mya as I have been riding her for 1.5 years now but have actually only ever had one lesson on her before (apart from when her owner gives me some pointers). Mya was pretty spooky and tense despite me lunging her before hand, but that was actually quite good as I feel I need some help dealing with her when she is like that and Noelie gave me some tips to help me with her when she decides to canter off with me! I was really pleased that Noelie seemed very calm and gentle as some of the instructors I have seen here in France seem to be quite loud and the lessons almost look a bit chaotic compared to what I am used to in the UK. So I have decided to start having regular lessons every fortnight with Noelie which I am very excited about and I am hoping that they will have a big impact on my online dressage test results too!

Also to top things off for January is that Noelie was able to sign me off for my Gallop 4 certificate. This is a very important achievement as that means I now have been declared good enough to compete in France! Not that I have any plans to at the moment, its just passing my Gallop 4 was always something I knew I needed to do to be able to compete if I wanted to. But I never really knew how to go about it. So it is a big relief to have it now!

Lastly, I feel pleased that despite not actually riding that much in January I was able to film and submit an online dressage test this month. I had a really fun morning with my horsey friends Nic, Kate and Trudy who all helped me film a test a few weeks ago. In September I aimed to enter a class each month, which I did right up to December when I was ill, the weather was horrendous and I was away for half of the month. But none the less I didn’t want to get out of the habit, so made sure a filmed a test and entered a class knowing that we may not get to practice much. But as usual Mya keeps me guessing and actually went quite well on the morning we filmed Prelim 14. I actually received the results today and we came 18th out of 22, with a score of 60%. Not our best. Actually this is our worst score so far but I am not going to be deterred. I am confident our results will improve soon with the lessons with Noelie we are going to have. I am just pleased that we are out there doing it! Our time will come because I am trying really really hard!

How was your January? What were your achievements? Let me know in the comments.

PS. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog this month is all about riding, of which we kick off with our first guest blogger of the year Georgina Bull who has written a fantastic blog for In Due Horse all about rider biomechanics that will be published next week. Don’t miss it!